Unlike Darwin, Wallace's name passed into obscurity upon his death in 1913.

Alfred Russel Wallace may not be a name as well-known as Charles Darwin, but London's Natural History Museum is one of many institutions that believes it should be.

The reason why is simple: ask the average person in the street who discovered natural selection, they will say, "Darwin." In fact it was discovered by Darwin and Wallace—both scientists arrived at the conclusion independently in the 19th century, and in fact the original publication of the theory featured both of their names on the cover.

A hundred years after his death, the Natural History Museum (NHM) is hoping to address this and to make 2013 the year of Wallace. By doing so, it hopes to publicly reinstate the Victorian as the co-discoverer of one of the most important discoveries in the history of science.

The NHM has this week launched Wallace Letters Online, a website that showcases for the first time the correspondence Wallace had during his life and research. All surviving letters have been scanned and transcribed by museum volunteers and staff, and can be freely read and downloaded.

Who was Alfred Wallace?

One need only speak to George Beccaloni, NHM curator and director of the Wallace Correspondence Project, to discover why Wallace was such an important character in the scientific history books.

"When he died it's been said that he was the most famous person in the world," Beccaloni tells Wired.co.uk. "Every newspaper around the world ran obituaries about him and called him the last of the great Victorians.

"Wallace received a lot of credit in his lifetime for being the co-discoverer [of natural selection]. He was awarded every honor that it's possible for a biologist to receive in Britain, including the most prestigious honour of the Royal Society, the Copley Medal."

Problematically, natural selection was a distinctly controversial topic when it was proposed, and so after his death in 1913, Wallace's name devolved into relative obscurity.

"It was only when modern genetics and population ecology emerged in the late-1930s that people realised that natural selection was the key to evolution," says Beccaloni. "People got interested in the history of the subject and in where the idea came from and they looked back and saw Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species' and didn't look any further."

Beccaloni is something of a Wallace evangelist, but he's not alone. He recently travelled with fellow Wallace fan Bill Bailey to Indonesia to film a two-part documentary for the BBC about the late scientist's discoveries. ("I went out as a sort of personal Wallace fact checker," says Beccaloni.) The documentary is set to be broadcast later this year.

For an insight into the life of Wallace, the Natural History Museum's Wallace Letters Online website is now open to the public.